Nether Largie North Cairn

Nether Largie North Cairn stands within Kilmartin Glen, part of a remarkable line of Bronze Age burial cairns strung along the valley floor near Kilmartin village in Argyll. Built at some point between roughly 2500 and 1000 BC, it is a substantial round mound, measuring about 21 metres north to south by 20 metres across and rising to some three metres in height. At its heart lies a stone burial chamber, or cist (a stone-lined burial box), aligned north to south and a little over one and a half metres long. What sets the cairn apart is its carved stonework. The great capstone that once sealed the grave carries at least forty cup-marks and ten axe-head symbols, and the inner face of the northern end-slab bears two further axe-heads, imagery that may already have been old when it was set here. Excavation in the late 1920s recovered only sparse remains from the cist: a single human tooth, traces of ochre, and fragments of charcoal, with a second grave found in the north-east of the mound. Protected as a scheduled monument, it offers a close view of prehistoric funerary ritual and rock art within one of Scotland’s densest concentrations of ceremonial monuments.